FORMATION OF DIFFERENT ISOTOPOMERS OF CHLORONIUM IN THE INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM

The main focus of this paper is to explore the possibility of finding two deuterated isotopomers of H sub(2)Cl super(+) (chloronium) in and around the interstellar medium. The presence of a chloronium ion has recently been confirmed by the Herschel Space Observatory's Heterodyne Instrument for the far-infrared. We find that these deuterated gas phase ions could be destroyed by various ion-molecular reactions, dissociative recombination (DR), and cosmic rays (CRs). We compute all of the ion-molecular (polar) reaction rates by using the parameterized trajectory theory and the ion-molecular (non-polar) reaction rates by using the Langevin theory. For DR- and CR-induced reactions, we adopt two well-behaved rate formulas. We also include these rate coefficients in our large gas-grain chemical network to study the chemical evolution of these species around the outer edge of the cold, dense cloud.